Is U.S. Dollar
Slowly Turning
Into the Yen?

By

Mark Gongloff

Updated Jan. 28, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

The U.S. financial crisis is starting to look eerily like Japan's: a real-estate bust after years of speculation, banks saddled with mountains of bad debt, interest rates heading lower as policy makers try to goose a slowing economy.

The developments have some currency traders asking the previously unthinkable: Could the U.S. dollar slowly be turning into the Western equivalent of the yen?